The First Sign of Madness
by BackForBreakfast
Summary: It was commonly accepted in the arcade that games were unplugged from time to time. So when the battered old machine that housed Fix-It Felix, Jr. did not return, it went without saying that everyone feared the worst. Some angsty Hero's Cuties and Ralph & Vanellope friendship, but based wholly around the Core Four.


**Disclaimer: I don't own _Wreck-It Ralph_ - but I _do_ love it!**

**A/N: Hello everybody! I'm here with another Wreck-It Ralph fic! I bet that was a surprise, huh?! This one was pretty hard to write. I had to put myself in a bit of a dark place to imagine what the characters were going through and how they would react to this situation, so it wasn't easy. I hope you enjoy the result - I do have the rest of the story planned out, so I aim to finish this one for sure! Another thanks to my friend Helenna for beta reading and discussing the plot over with me :)**

**As always, your reviews are much appreciated and inspire me to keep writing!**

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**The First Sign of Madness**

**A _Wreck-It Ralph_ Fanfiction**

**Chapter 1**

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"And that's all you know?"

"Y-yes," the little man stammered. From the tips of his perfectly-polished boots to his chestnut-coloured moustache, his entire body was shaking. "That's everything, I swear!"

The Surge Protector raised an eyebrow. "Alright," he sighed, sliding his pen into his clipboard with frightening precision. "You're free to go. Thanks for your help, gentlemen." The two armoured soldiers nodded in acknowledgment. They were at least twice his size; big, brutish men with faces like clenched fists. "Now remember," he continued, "this entire area is off-limits. Station rules - nobody gets close until we get to the bottom of this." Then with a flash he was gone, his body disintegrating into a stream of electricity that zipped across the power strip at lightning speed.

The subject of interrogation looked up at the terminal. Where a few hours prior there had been an entrance there stood now only a solid metal gate bolted firmly together. Beyond this, he knew, was a void of inky blackness - a gaping hole that stretched into infinity, a tunnel which led to an instant, irreversible death.

He'd seen it himself.

"You okay there, little fella?"

The soldier's booming voice shook him out of his thoughts, and he jumped at the sound. "I'll be alright," he murmured, his voice barely intelligible. He pulled a handkerchief out of his suit pocket and dabbed at his eyes. "I'm – I'm just a little shaken, that's all."

"Tough day, huh?" the soldier smiled. He'd been there long enough to know that the man was an _old-timer_ – his 8-bit walk and simple, clean-cut design spoke for themselves. Standing barely two feet tall he was a strange sight, with a bulbous pink nose and protruding, square-shaped ears. "Can't have been easy for you. Look, let us buy you a drink – seems like you could use it." He nudged his comrade, who grunted in reluctant agreement.

The little man shuffled his feet. "That's very kind of you sir, but I must decline. I'm… not thirsty." In truth a cup of Mary's delicious Earl Grey sounded heavenly right about then, but the mere thought of that hot steaming mug made his eyes well up with tears.

The soldier shrugged. "Okay, but make sure you find somewhere safe to stay. Some dangerous types hang around this place at night." He held out his gloved hand. "Name's Avery. I'm a lance corporal stationed over in _Hero's Duty_. And you are?"

"Norwood," said the man, returning his handshake. He shrunk a little; compared to Avery's title it seemed somewhat less impressive.

"Well Norwood, good luck." Avery got to his feet, his massive frame towering five times the moustachioed man's height. "If you're ever in need of help – or a pair of drinking buddies – you know where to find us." He gave him a firm salute, and Norwood returned it in earnest.

As the soldiers marched away, Norwood's gaze turned toward the LED sign mounted above the terminal entrance. Where other games had their titles displayed proudly in large red letters – _Pac-Man, Altered Beast, Dance Dance Revolution_ – this sign stood empty. He sobbed quietly to himself. He didn't know how he'd managed to get out, how he alone had succeeded in surviving when so many others had perished. And now here he was, by himself in Game Central Station - a solitary relic, the last reminder of his game.

A game, he knew, which had been unplugged.

_Fix-It Felix, Jr._

* * *

"ATTENTION," the robotic voice boomed. "CLOSING HOURS ARE NOW IN OPERATION. ALL MILITARY PERSONNEL RETURN TO BASE FOR DEBRIEFING." Almost calm in its tone, the sound echoed to every corner of _Hero's Duty_ - and Sergeant Calhoun was glad to hear it.

She studied her gun. Forty-five long minutes had passed since the last game, and it had been left to the marines to pick off the last few cy-bugs which avoided the day's countless beacons. Her weapon had jammed in the midst of the chaos, leaving her near-defenceless against the hordes of encroaching insects. In the end, despite her frustrations, she'd had to back out entirely. She returned to the weapons unit and tossed the defective gun onto the counter with a solid _thunk_. "Haven't you got anything better than this pea-shooter?"

"Sorry, Sarge." The weapons specialist, a grotesquely large man with uncountable chins and a crew cut slid the gun under the desk. "You know how it is. They glitch out sometimes, what with the development cutbacks and all." He chewed open-mouthed on an old piece of gum; the sound as it pried away from his teeth was near-intolerable.

Calhoun restrained her disgust. "Just fix it, soldier. It's a death trap out there, and I sure as fun am not about to get caught."

The man glanced at the rack of weapons mounted on the wall. "You, er, want another one of those, or something with a bit more… firepower?" He motioned his pudgy hand toward a double-barrelled pistol. "This baby came in with the patch. She'll cut those bugs down real good."

Calhoun sighed. As was often the case those days, she had places to be. Whereas before she would spend most evenings cooped up alone in her quarters, her blossoming yet unlikely relationship with the blue-shirted handyman had caused her to become somewhat more adventurous. One night it was stargazing in _Galaga_, the next, prime seats at a tournament of _Street Fighter II_. That particular evening Felix had vowed to take her somewhere special, though what he had in mind was a mystery. She waved a dismissive hand. "Look, as long as it's not going to—"

Suddenly, a grip on her shoulder.

Startled by the unexpected touch she span around, instinctively reaching for the combat dagger sheathed upon her belt. Her posture relaxed when she saw the tall, well-built figure in front of her. She smiled, "You're lucky I don't have my pistol, Kohut. Thirty seconds later and you'd have been laser fodder."

But there was something in her comrade's look that planted a seed of unease in her mind. He stood stone-faced, his features contorted into a strange expression. His brow was furrowed, his gaze focused and his lips tightly pursed. Calhoun found her voice slipping from her usual hard-edged tone into something altogether softer, more vulnerable, and try as she might she could not unlock her eyes from his unblinking stare. "What's wrong?"

Kohut's response was simple. "Come with me, Sarge. I've got some bad news."

* * *

It was commonly accepted in the arcade that games were unplugged from time to time. On many an occasion cabinets were moved around either to make room for a new addition, or more often than not to satisfy one of Litwak's many whims and fancies. These _transfers_ as they were known were generally traumatic for all involved, not least the unfortunate game's inhabitants. So when the battered old machine that housed _Fix-It Felix, Jr._ did not return it went without saying that everyone feared the worst.

Three long days crept past.

For a lead character any concept of sympathy leave was out of the question. Like Felix and Ralph before her, Calhoun was the lynchpin of her game. The players expected her to introduce them to the conflict, to lead them to the tower, to show them how to blast out a cy-bug's guts with a single well-aimed shot. Nobody else was programmed to do it. It was her duty and hers alone. Usually she would relish this fact – the thought that she was so essential to the success of _Hero's Duty_ gave her a great sense of pride – but now she wished she were just an extra, a nameless background soldier nobody would ever know were missing.

At least then, she thought bitterly, she would have chance to grieve.

And so despite wanting nothing more than to shut herself away in her bunkroom, she continued to face the gamers. The frenetic pace of the action and the constant threat of danger provided moments of diversion, but as she watched the excited faces of the children who reached the final chamber and saw the Medal of Heroes lower around their necks she felt strangely empty. In the quiet moments – the seconds before she prepared her troops for battle, the downtime between quarter alerts – she spoke to no-one and kept her thoughts to herself.

Kohut had seen it before. Like the sergeant his backstory was peppered with vivid memories, moments so tangible it was as if he had lived them first-hand. After Dr Brad Scott met his untimely end he had seen the walls go up around her, had sensed the pain buried deep in her code. Now that Felix was gone those cold fortifications had built themselves up again, this time stronger, almost impenetrable. Every attempt to talk to her was met with sharp dismissal.

More than anything, she wanted answers.

The sergeant always carried an air of intimidation. The way she walked – her tight-lipped expression, her hand forever on the holster of her gun – everything contributed to the distant, unapproachable façade she so effortlessly maintained. As she strode through Game Central Station that particular evening the effect was even more pronounced. She was a hunter, carefully stalking her prey.

Norwood had little to report. Shuffling in his pristine suit the Nicelander seemed quite out of place, neither coming nor going anywhere in particular, instead wandering aimlessly between the platforms muttering to himself. _The first sign of madness_, Calhoun thought with a frown.

"There was no warning. By the time we realised Litwak was pulling the plug it was too late for most of us. I was tending to the flowers by the station entrance and managed to hop into the tram just in time. The way back… it… it closed up behind me." He shivered, as if recalling the vacuum of nothingness that chased him down the tunnel.

Calhoun's voice was stern, "And where was Felix?"

"I-I don't know. At the apartments, probably. Along with Gene, Mary...even Ralph, I suppose." He fumbled nervously with his tie. "Oh, can we stop? I've had just about enough questioning for one week."

Norwood, it seemed, had been saved by gardening.

But the Nicelander was not the only familiar face in the station that evening. As Calhoun traipsed miserably toward _Hero's Duty_, many a curse on her lips, she noticed that perched on one of the plastic benches was a little girl barely two feet in height. Her hands were buried deep into a mint-green sweater, and a hood was pulled up over her jet-black hair, cords drawn so tautly that her face was almost hidden. Calhoun recognised her instantly: Vanellope von Schweetz, glitch-turned-president of the candy-coated racing game _Sugar Rush_. She was, as far as she could see, alone.

_Grief was a horribly selfish thing._

As she looked down at the nine-year-old the sergeant could see reflected in her something of her own sorrow. Her eyes were tired, swollen, devoid of any trace of her usual rambunctious nature. It dawned upon her that in her hunt for answers, in her desperate bid to find some sort of sense in a senseless situation, that she had paid little attention to what mattered the most. The _Core Four_ – a term Vanellope herself had gleefully coined – were truly a family in the tightest sense, more so than she had ever known. And she, for all her faults and foibles, had been accepted as one of them.

As she sat down beside her it was evident that Vanellope was upset. The little girl's voice was choked, and she shuffled uncomfortably away. "What do _you_ want?"

Calhoun was not the motherly type, nor had she ever had any maternal instincts – she simply wasn't coded that way. Eventually she managed a feeble, "How you holding up, cadet?" She winced; it came out rather more formal than intended.

Vanellope sniffed. "You're not the only one who lost somebody." Before the sergeant had chance to respond, she continued, "I tried waiting for you outside your game, but you didn't come, and your stupid soldiers wouldn't let me in. I thought… I thought maybe you knew what happened."

Calhoun bowed her head, letting her golden bangs fall like a mask over her face. "There are some things in life we can't change," she said grimly. The thoughts swarmed through her mind: _a harshly-spoken word, a simple perimeter check… or one last, heartfelt goodbye._

"But it's not fair!" Vanellope's voice was angry now, more forceful, and tears welled up in her eyes. "How can they just _take people away_ and act like nothing's wrong?"

"Vanellope," Calhoun's voice was firm, "sometimes there is nothing you can do. You have to learn that."

And in a sudden she was not talking to the little girl but to herself sitting there on that bench, a perfect double staring back at her with ferocious eyes. There she was, that other side that she tried so desperately to keep hidden; the side of her that wanted nothing more than to scream, to cry, to turn the world upside down in fury.

"No. You can't just hide it all away. That's all you've ever done."

"And then what?" Calhoun stood up, exasperated. "Allow the cy-bugs to run rampant across the arcade without me to whip those boys into shape? The mission comes first. The mission _always_ comes first. I am a sergeant."

"You are a woman."

Calhoun froze, and she felt her fists clench into solid, rock-hard balls. "Get out," she whispered.

The illusion showed no sign of moving.

"Do you hear me?" she yelled, her voice teetering on the edge of insanity. "_Get OUT!_"

As quickly as it had appeared, the twisted double melted away to reveal the tiny figure of Vanellope once again. The little girl was frozen in fear, and she started to glitch, her body shifting to binary the way it always did when her emotions ran high. Before Calhoun could react she turned and ran.

Talking to yourself. It really was the first sign of madness.

* * *

Somewhere a long way from home, Wreck-It Ralph emerged from his stump and yawned.

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**A/N: Ooooh... to be continued! Thank you for reading - reviews would make my day! :)**


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